The Summer House

by Marcia Willett

  He held it, staring at his own face laughing back at him; his stomach contracted, as if in fear, and his heart beat quickly. He turned the photograph over but nothing was written on the back. He looked inside the envelope, shaking it, but nothing else was enclosed and the envelope bore a foreign stamp that he did not recognize and a smudged postmark that he could not decipher. He studied the photograph again. The camera had been a little behind him and his head was turned, chin on shoulder, and he was smiling at the photographer.

  Matt tried to remember when it might have been taken, and where – on one of his trips abroad? – and by whom, and wondered why it had been sent to his mother with no message. He was gripped by an irrational fear, and great confusion clouded his mind.

  When his mobile signalled that it had received a text he seized the phone with relief. The text was from Lottie and it was brief.

  ‘R u OK?’

  He stared at it. This was not the first time that Lottie had demonstrated her powers of second sight. He and Im had often teased her about it. Somehow the text steadied him; confirmed his decision to leave London for a while and spend time with his family. He put the photograph back into its envelope, studying the stamp and postmark again but making no sense of it, and then texted to Lottie.

  His mind was made up: he would go down to Exmoor next week.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  During March there was heavy snowfall followed by hail showers. Snow settled on the high, bare hills and along the gaunt, naked branches of the trees; it drifted in the coombes and filled the valleys. Even in Bossington the snow lay for a few hours.

  Staring out from his attic window, Matt marvelled at the transformation; at the concealing and magical properties of snow. The landscape was a wonderland. Wolves might roam on the high, gleaming slopes of Dunkery Hill and not seem out of place; trolls might lurk in icy caves deep in Culbone Wood whilst, here in the garden, Kay and Gerda might be having a snowball fight. Even Lottie’s little octagonal pagoda, with its pointed roof, looked like a house in a fairy story, overhung with dipping, snow-weighted branches of the surrounding trees. It seemed that at any moment the door would open and a Hans Andersen character, warmly cloaked and wearing heavy wooden clogs, would appear on the threshold. Beyond the huddled roofs of Bossington, across the silver sheet of water that lay flat as a metal shelf, the mountains of Wales glittered in the late afternoon sunshine, dazzling white and shadowed with indigo.

  With a cry of alarm, the blackbird swooped out of the shrubbery up into one of the beeches, dislodging the snow, which fell with a small soft explosive plop on to the roof of the pagoda. As Matt watched, Pud appeared from the tangle of rhododendron bushes, his coat a warm golden note of colour against the chill whiteness. It was he, no doubt, who had disturbed the blackbird and now he was making for the warmth of the house and a biscuit. His tracks crisscrossed the snowy ground as he diverged from his path to examine the trodden area around the bird table, but presently he headed off towards the kitchen again and disappeared from sight.

  Matt got to his feet, shivering. Lottie had provided him with an electric convector heater in an attempt to warm the two adjoining attic rooms but here, high up beneath the roof, it was still bitterly cold. He went down the steep little staircase to the first floor, and then on down again and through the warren of rooms into the parlour where the wood-burner was blazing and Venetia was sitting with Milo.

  ‘Hallo,’ Matt said to Venetia. ‘I saw you arrive and thought it was very brave of you to venture out.’

  She offered her cheek for a kiss. ‘The roads are quite clear,’ she said, ‘although I admit that I came out through Bossington Lane rather than risk Allerford, but there’s hardly any snow left in the village. You’re so much higher here. Good heavens, Matt, you’re frozen. Come and sit beside me.’

  Pushing aside the heap of Lottie’s knitting, she edged along the sofa so that he could be next to the fire and he sat down, grinning at Milo’s expression.

  ‘Cold!’ scoffed the old warrior, right on cue. ‘This isn’t cold. Now Catterick Camp. That’s what you’d call cold. Ice on the inside of the windows when you woke up in the morning. Water frozen solid in the pipes. The earth hard as iron. These days, one little fall of snow and you have to have radiators going all day and hot-water bottles at night.’ He snorted with contempt.

  Venetia touched Matt’s knee. ‘Of course, Milo isn’t human,’ she said regretfully, ‘but he can’t help it, poor darling. Lottie’s making us some lovely tea. That’ll warm you up. Oh, and here’s darling Pud.’

  Pud came wagging in with the air of a dog that has been thoroughly rubbed with a towel and given a reward, and he went straight to Venetia with that unerring sense that here was a soft touch; any cake going and she’d give him a share. He sat close against her legs and she stroked him, murmuring words of love to him. His ears flattened appreciatively though he rolled a wary eye at Milo, who was watching sardonically.

  ‘He is not to be fed,’ he warned Venetia. ‘I don’t want any of that nonsense, mind,’ and Matt smiled at Venetia’s expression of hurt innocence, whilst she continued to smooth Pud’s head.

  Lottie came in with the tray and he got up to help her. She looked at him with that strange searching glance and he smiled reassuringly at her. Since his arrival they’d discussed the photograph at length and she was just as puzzled as he was.

  ‘It’s all of a piece with those other photographs,’ he’d insisted. ‘Who took them, and why? There’s something odd about them.’

  She’d sensed his fear but had no answer ready. He’d telephoned the news agency, who’d been unable to help apart from telling him that they had a long-standing arrangement to forward any mail.

  ‘And that’s weird in itself,’ he’d said to Lottie. ‘Dad died over twenty-five years ago. Why should anyone still be writing to him? Anyway this was addressed to Mum.’

  ‘People who’d read his books or articles might try to contact him or his family that way,’ she’d said, ‘but I agree that it’s unusual after all this time.’

  They’d decided that, with all the fuss going on with Im and Jules and the Summer House, they wouldn’t mention it to anyone else just yet, and Matt was grateful to be distracted from his preoccupation. He passed Venetia her tea, took his own and sat down again.

  ‘I don’t blame Jules,’ Milo was saying for the umpteenth time, ‘but I’m very sad for Im. She would have loved it so much. Well, we all would have. But there it is. Jules has made up his mind, it seems.’

  Just for the moment, Matt thought that the older man’s curled lip classed Jules amongst the cissies who required heated rooms and warm beds in sub-zero temperatures. No doubt Milo would have been perfectly happy to cross Exmoor in all sorts of weather in the middle of the night and never given it another thought. Matt decided to play devil’s advocate.

  ‘It’s terribly hard for her,’ he said, ‘because she’s really torn. Of course she quite sees Jules’ viewpoint – she hates the travelling he has to do – but then again, she’d love to live at the Summer House. I expect you experience the same sort of difficulties in the services, Milo. You get wives who simply don’t want to live in married quarters on the base or get fed up with moving around and want to settle down somewhere and then, I suppose, it can cause problems.’

  Milo was silent. He drank his tea, frowning slightly, whilst Venetia glanced sideways at Matt and gave him a complicit wink.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ she said with an amused eye on Milo. ‘We were expected to be there with the regiment, supporting the chaps, living in the most ghastly accommodation sometimes, and the senior officers and their wives looked very poorly on those wives who couldn’t hack it. Poor Sara utterly hated it, didn’t she, Milo? Simply couldn’t cope at all, especially once she’d had Nick. She wanted her own nice little house in the country. My old pa used to be very tough with me about it if I dared to moan. “Marry the man, marry the job,” he used to say. “No good whining afterwards.”
Not that Im is moaning. She’s being very stoical and I expect Jules is feeling rotten at having to put his foot down.’

  ‘I’ve already said I don’t blame Jules,’ repeated Milo crossly …

  Having set the cat amongst the pigeons, Matt sat back and sipped his tea. He felt it was crucial that nobody took sides and that Im and Jules fought it out for themselves. He accepted a slice of cake and steadfastly refused to meet Pud’s hopeful eye: he had no desire to tempt Milo’s wrath any further.

  ‘We should have thought about the problems earlier,’ Lottie was saying. ‘I have to admit I thought it was a wonderful idea but now I can really see the drawbacks. It’s a very long way across to Simonsbath and it’s unfair to expect Jules to do it. I’m just afraid that we’ve caused trouble between them.’

  ‘Will you sell it anyway, Milo?’ asked Venetia. Matt could tell that even she was too wary of Milo’s mood to drop the odd crumb to the expectant Pud. ‘Now that the Moretons are going?’

  Milo shifted in his chair, drawing in his long legs. ‘I don’t really want to sell on the open market,’ he admitted. ‘Apart from the fact that it’ll cost a fortune to bring it up to date, it’s always been in the family and it shares part of the garden. It would be tricky to parcel up the land so as to make it a sellable proposition. Fortunately the Moretons never wanted much in the way of a garden and we were all used to one another after all these years. It’ll be very different when it comes to selling. I suppose I’m anxious about getting the neighbours from hell but I’m probably just being an old fogey about that.’

  Matt looked at him sympathetically. He could understand that it would be hard for Milo to see the Summer House in the hands of strangers, and that it would be impossible to have the same easy-going arrangements he’d made with the Moretons twenty years ago – sharing part of the kitchen garden, for instance, and some of the outhouses – with people who wanted to buy it. As he watched the older man’s face, Matt had an extraordinary idea. He examined it as the conversation rose and fell, and liked it more with every passing minute.

  Why shouldn’t he buy the Summer House? He’d earned plenty of money out of the film and the book – and was continuing to earn more – and although he’d made some careful investments, he’d been wondering how to utilize some of the remainder sensibly. Why not buy the Summer House? He could use it himself and have friends to stay, Im and Jules could use it as a holiday cottage, and it would mean that Lottie would have somewhere to go if Milo should die first. Catching her eye, smiling at her, Matt felt a true uprush of pleasure at the thought of being able to return some of the love and care that she had poured out on him and Imogen, and he knew that it would remove anxiety from Milo. After all, there really was no question of Alice and Nick ever living at the High House; they’d sell it, no doubt about that – and then where would Lottie go? Of course, Milo had left provision for her to stay on for as long as she wanted to but it was clear that Lottie would do nothing of the kind. Making certain that the Summer House stayed within the family would give her some security.

  Matt finished his tea. This was one of the moments when having money to spare brought very real joy. Since his success he’d found it difficult with his friends, walking that fine line between being considered either patronizingly generous or being castigated as a tightwad. Sometimes it seemed that he couldn’t win. Of course he liked having the money but he was not by nature extravagant. Even his one real passion – travel – could be indulged without being very rich; huge luxury hotels and the pleasure grounds of places like Dubai had never attracted him. He was like the cat that walked by himself in quiet, secret, undiscovered byways, yet always hoping to discover the one thing that would heal that inner sense of incompleteness.

  Lottie was watching him curiously now, and Matt grinned broadly at her. Even the mystery of the photographs couldn’t detract from this truly happy moment. He longed to speak out, to surprise them all, but he suspected that Milo wouldn’t approve of quite such a public announcement. Matt never knew quite how deeply in Milo’s confidence Venetia was – did she know about Nick’s misdemeanour, for instance? – and he could see that it would be sensible to wait until he and Milo were alone.

  Unable to contain his excitement he stood up.

  ‘I think I’ll go out for a walk,’ he said. ‘A quick one before the snow completely disappears. Come on, Pud. Never mind the cake. Come and get some exercise.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  After Matt had gone and Lottie had carried out the tea things, Milo sat for a moment brooding. He felt grumpy, unwilling even to respond to Venetia, who was now chattering about poor old Clara. The whole episode about the Summer House had got him down – and Matt’s observations hadn’t exactly helped. Of course, the boy was right – and Milo could see that if Imogen were to insist on living in Bossington it might well cause problems between her and Jules – but that didn’t make him feel any better about it. He’d been so pleased at the prospect of killing two birds with one stone – and, if he were to be really honest with himself, he’d been looking forward to sharing in Im’s happiness and gratitude; to being acknowledged as the good fairy who’d helped to make her dreams come true – whilst sorting Nick out at the same time. He’d wanted Lottie to have the pleasure of giving Im the glad tidings but he’d been confident that she would be coming over to see them, full of joy and ready to celebrate. He’d even put a bottle of champagne in the fridge in readiness.

  Instead, there had been an awkward little phone call from Im saying that Jules was very worried about living so far from the practice and it looked as if they’d have to refuse Milo’s wonderful offer. Oh, she’d been full of messages from them both of how sweet it was of him to think of it and so on, but the bottom line was that it wasn’t going to work. He’d been gutted, and he hadn’t quite been able to overcome his immediate reaction: that it was rather feeble of Jules to be so worried about driving to and fro across Exmoor in the comfort of a whacking great four-track. Good grief! The boy was barely in his thirties; at that age he’d been fighting in Northern Ireland … Milo gave a mental shrug: there was no point in going down that road.

  And, he told himself, it wasn’t only because he knew how much Im loved the Summer House that he’d been so pleased but that it was also a kind of safety net for Lottie, much as she might protest that she’d never live there with them. It was the best he could do for her.

  He shifted irritably, trying to concentrate on what Venetia was saying to him, and she paused.

  ‘You’re not listening to a word I’m saying,’ she said plaintively. ‘Come and sit beside me, Milo.’

  He got up and sat next to her, putting an arm around her thin shoulders, looking down at her with a mix of great affection and slight impatience. Why, for instance, did she put mascara on her eyelashes? Clotted with that black stuff they rayed out like spider’s legs, weighting her papery eyelids so cruelly that he longed for some of those wipes that Im used to clean Rosie’s face, so as to remove the mascara and allow the fine fair lashes to be free and natural.

  ‘What do you do, Milo, when you wake at three in the morning with the horrors?’ she was asking him. She shuddered within his arm and he tightened it protectively about her. ‘You know what I mean, don’t you? “The fears and terrors of the night”. It’s a prayer or a hymn or something, isn’t it? But it’s got it absolutely right. It seems impossible to keep any kind of balance at that time of the night, everything just seems so black, and I plunge into despair. What do you do?’

  He sensed the vulnerability behind her question, her need for reassurance, and he answered truthfully.

  ‘I recite a psalm,’ he said – and she sat upright in his arm and stared up at him incredulously.

  ‘A psalm?’ She looked as if she might burst out laughing. ‘Doesn’t sound quite like you, darling.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t, does it?’ he agreed placidly. ‘But it works. An army padre gave me the tip, oh, years ago when I was out in Northern Ireland and I’d
just seen two of my closest friends blown to pieces. “Whenever you’re fearful,” he said, “pray a few verses of a psalm. You’ll be surprised how calming and comforting it is.” Well, I was a sceptical young soldier but I decided to humour him. “And which one should it be, Padre?” I asked him, and he answered straight out. “The hundred and twenty-first,” he said, and when I stared at him blankly he recited it to me and I have to tell you, Vin, I was very deeply moved. Perhaps it was because they were frightening times and I was mourning my friends, but it struck a chord with me. I went away and looked it up. “The Lord himself watches over you; he is the shade at your right hand so that the sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall keep you from all evil, it is He who shall keep your soul.” I memorized it.’ She was still staring up at him and he shrugged away the serious mood. ‘Well, you asked me. What do you do? Reach for the Mogadon?’

  Reluctantly she laughed with him. ‘Sometimes,’ she admitted.

  He turned his wrist behind her shoulder and glanced at his watch. ‘Nearly time for a drink,’ he said, edging her away from the emotional moment. ‘Are you going to stay for supper?’

  ‘Oh, I’d love to. Are you sure? Will there be enough?’ She was forgetting her fears and terrors, just as he’d hoped. ‘Perhaps we ought to check with Lottie.’

  He snorted. ‘It’s got nothing to do with Lottie. I’m doing the cooking. She’d turn my delicious piece of lamb into something that tasted like roadkill. Stay if you’d like to.’

  It was a sop; a gesture of kindness far smaller than the one she was hinting at – or so he suspected. She was testing him, sounding him out as to how the future might work for them both, and his instinct was to play it safe. Lottie came back in and he looked at her with relief; the time for confidences was postponed.

  ‘Did we tell you that Nick’s coming down again for a few days?’ she asked Venetia. She settled in her chair and picked up her knitting on its thick wooden needles. ‘How are all your lot?’